According to Britain’s Autocar, the Buggy up! concept has been granted a US design patent in recent weeks, suggesting that the car is now closer than ever to being given the green light.

The patent application is understood to have been lodged in March 2012, five months after the Buggy up! first appeared at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The approved patent runs for 14 years, starting from last month.

A jacked-up version of the up! isn't hard to imagine, with buyers in Europe already able to choose from Polo and Golf based SUV variants.

Whether such a model would retain the two-seater open-topped styling of the Buggy concept is unclear, however.

If the Buggy up! was to reach the production stage, it would not be the first of the up! concepts to do so, with confirmation that the up! GT is set for production this year.

The Buggy up! would join the Volkswagen Taigun SUV – which is due to arrive in 2016 – as a second SUV to be built on the NSF platform that underpins the up!.

No word yet on whether the up! GT, the Taigun SUV or a future Buggy up! SUV model would be available in Australia, but each model could easily make a sales pitch here.